


Something In The Water

by Sixthlight



Category: Midsomer Murders - All Media Types, Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Crossover, Gen, Humor, Post-Foxglove Summer, background Peter/Beverley, canon-compliant for RoL but not MM, this is a RoL story using MM as a backdrop more than a straight crossover, written with love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 14:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8405590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixthlight/pseuds/Sixthlight
Summary: “I wouldn’t be holidaying in Midsomer,” said Miriam. “Their murder team works harder than we do. You’ll probably trip over six bodies before the week’s up.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Foxglove Summer was basically the canonical Rivers of London/Midsomer Murders crossover I always wanted, except with more competent police and way less murder ~~and incest~~ ~~and pagans~~ ~~unless we count Beverley but I don’t think we do~~ ~~anyway~~ , but I couldn’t resist the urge to go for it. 
> 
> I know both the original Inspector Barnaby and Sergeant Troy had long moved on by 2012 when Peter joins the Folly, assuming Midsomer Murders takes place roughly around the airing dates of each season, but Midsomer exists in a sort of ‘eternal now’ anyway, so please excuse the timeline discrepancy.

“Senior officers’ meeting for two hours on Thursday,” Miriam told Alex as they headed for the canteen. “Did you see? Going to be a load of bloody nothing. I’m going to have to nip out for coffee before _and_ during.”

“You might,” Alex told her. “I’m not here – booked a nice cottage in the country for a week and a half. I’m off tomorrow. You’re all just going to have to carry on without me.”

“It’ll be a blow,” Miriam sighed. “But somehow we’ll soldier on. You lucky bugger. Rebecca and I can’t manage to get away until August, and that’s assuming I’m not knee-deep in a case.”

“I had my fingers crossed until this morning, but nothing’s shown up,” Alex admitted. “Thank fucking god. After last month, if there’d been anything else I would’ve given up getting out of bed.”

They’d had three, count ‘em, _three_ Falcon-associated cases in May. Poor Sahra Guleed had done her best, but Alex had had to supervise some of it, and it had nearly driven him batty. Whenever Thomas fucking Nightingale was involved, there were almost never any arrests and very rarely any explanations that didn’t involve the m-word. Alex purely detested explanations that involved the m-word. That couldn’t go on a report, now could it. And then you had to waste good policing time making up something that _could_. Besides filing falsified reports, which wasn’t good fucking policing whichever way you looked at it. Although at least there was nothing that had compared to that mess with Cecelia Tyburn-Thames’ daughter.

“Well, there’s not going to be any of that wherever you’re going,” Miriam consoled him.

“Grant spent a couple of weeks in Herefordshire year before last, that missing child case,” Alex reminded her with some gloom. “There were unicorns or something. I managed to avoid hearing about the something. Trying to forget the unicorns.”

“Are you going to Herefordshire, then?” Miriam wanted to know.

“I’m never going near the place again, now I know Grant’s been rampaging around it stirring up the locals.” Local coppers and other locals – didn’t make much of a difference. “I’ve got a place in Midsomer – village is called Midsomer something, too, I forget what. Anyhow, I’m going to sit in a chair on the lawn, I’m going to read a good book that doesn’t have fucking murders _or_ fucking unicorns in it, and I’m not going to worry about a damned thing until I get back Monday the twenty-ninth. Don’t take this the wrong way, Miriam, but I don’t even want to hear from you unless it’s an emergency big enough to have me doing blues-and-twos all the way back to London, and that’s a fact.”

“Fair enough,” said Miriam, “but in that case I wouldn’t be holidaying in Midsomer. Their murder team works harder than we do. You’ll probably trip over six bodies before the week’s up.”

Alex snorted. “Likely story.”

“No, it’s true – check the statistics, if you don’t believe me. One of the forensics techs who just joined us transferred from there. Said there weren’t many shootings, but the locals got really inventive about offing each other every other way possible. Something in the water, maybe.”

“Christ.” Alex considered this. “Well – not _my_ problem, as long as they’re not getting inventive about offing _me_. And at least there won’t be any weird bollocks.”

“Not that I heard of,” Miriam allowed. “Drownings, stabbings, poisonings, hangings, bashings, shootings, something really weird with a catapult and some wine bottles, but no weird bollocks.”

Alex almost asked about the catapult and the wine bottles, but decided to wait until after lunch. Morbid curiosity had its time and place.  

*

The first day of his holiday went almost perfectly – not so perfectly that it was suspicious, but the right sort of perfectly, the sort that was real. The London traffic was slow but not abysmal, and Alex made such good time that he decided to stop in Causton for lunch before he went on to the cottage. He had a really good ploughman’s at a pub. There was the odd look from the locals, but it was just the you’re-not-from-around-here type of suspicion, nothing out of the ordinary; it rolled right off. The cottage was exactly as it had been on the website, when he’d booked it, down to the garden furniture, where he planned to spend a lot of time. The lawn in front of the cottage sloped down to the river – the Somer, Alex thought – which flowed placidly and cleanly past. Cleanly by the standards of the Thames, anyway.

“You’re here for eight days, right?” asked the owner as he handed over the keys. “Sorry, I should know that; we’re a bit new to this renting out thing.”

The bloke was in his fifties, sandy-blond hair going gray, looked like he’d been fit once but that was a phase that had passed. Alex’s money was on lawyer, maybe accountant. He wasn’t going to ask because he didn’t actually care.

“Just doing it for the extra cash, then? No ambitions to get into the B&B business?”

The owner laughed. “More or less, and not really – I’d sell the place if I could but it’s part of my dad’s property and he just won’t leave until we carry him out, not that I’m hoping for that. He might drop by to say hello, by the way.”

“Hmmm,” grunted Alex, who didn’t really want to make conversation with some old bugger who should probably be in a rest home.

“Anyway, I’ve got to get on. You’ve got our phone number if there’s anything wrong.” He turned to go. “Oh – one last thing; I know the river looks calm but it’s deeper than it looks. I wouldn’t try wading or anything.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Alex said. “But thanks for the warning.”

“Well, we’re definitely not going to have any luck renting this place out if our third guest drowns in front of it,” said the owner. “Have a good afternoon.”

That was a bit morbid, in Alex's professional opinion as DCI of a homicide team, but probably fair. He set about getting his things into the cottage. In the afternoon he popped out to the shops for food – he liked cooking, when he got the chance, it was one of the reasons he’d wanted a cottage for his holiday and not just got a hotel or B&B.

The old man did wander along as he was getting the groceries out of the car, just like his son had predicted. He was frail but sinewy, still had most of his hair – nearly snow-white –  and leaned heavily on his cane. It was silver-handled and reminded Alex irritatingly of Thomas Nightingale, who probably should look that old and didn’t, the fucker.

“You’re our guest, I take it,” the old man said. Posh accent, too; not a local, or one who’d been bundled off to public school early on. “Up from the city.”

“Just looking for a few days of peace and quiet,” said Alex.

“Then I shan’t bother you any further,” said the old man. “You should sit out on the lawn – it’s going to be a nice evening.” He nodded to Alex and limped off down the driveway.

Alex could appreciate somebody who knew when they weren’t wanted, and took the old man’s advice, with his book and a nice local stout. It was a lovely evening. There was birdsong as the sun set. If it hadn’t been for the day’s minor annoyances he would have found it suspicious.

In retrospect, he thought, he shouldn’t have been surprised when he got up the next morning, made coffee, wandered out, and saw a fucking body floating down the river.

*

The Somer might flow placidly but it was surprisingly fast; Alex sprinted down the lawn, but the body was past the point he could reach it before he got there, swept back out into the middle and then snagged on something under the surface, ten or fifteen meters downstream. All Alex could see was a pale head of hair and dark clothing – not bathers, a jacket and trousers, maybe.  He briefly thought about wading out, but he remembered the warning he’d got yesterday, and he’d never been a good swimmer. Besides, he knew a corpse when he saw one; whoever it was, they weren’t getting any deader. So he got out his phone and called 999. This wasn’t his manor and he wasn’t about to out himself as a copper before he needed to, or like as not the local idiots would expect him to help, and he was here on fucking holiday.

Damn Miriam for being right, anyway.

They set up the forensics tent on his lawn, because of course they did. Alex was taken aside by the SIO’s sergeant, a tall young man with a flowery taste in ties called Gavin Troy. He hoped it wouldn’t take long, but knew it would; he didn’t have anybody to give him an alibi between when he’d spoken to the old bloke the evening before and when he’d picked up the phone and got emergency services. They’d have to rule him out. It was amazing how many murderers called in the body, thinking they were being clever.

He’d _known_ it had been going too well the day before. He hadn’t managed a proper holiday in five years at least, and now this. Fucking hell.

“Your name, sir?” asked DS Troy.

“Alexander Seawoll,” he said.

“And you’re here on holiday?”

“Up from London for a week and a bit, trying to find some peace and quiet.” Alex couldn’t help a dirty look out the window at the river. “Then I walk out the front door and there’s a body floating past. They could’ve picked another river.”

He’d been meaning to keep quiet about what he did for a living, if he could manage it – either the locals were going to want help or they were going to be sullen that he was here and neither of those were what he wanted – but just because they were rural didn’t mean they were stupid, unfortunately. The sergeant’s eyes narrowed at Alex’s casual disregard for human life.

“Do you mind telling me what you do for a living?” he asked.

Fuck. “I’m with the Met,” Alex said reluctantly, and dug out his warrant card.

“Thank you, sir,” said the sergeant, handing it back. “And you’re with…”

“The Westminster borough homicide unit, out of Belgravia nick,” Alex said, because they’d find out in about thirty seconds. “And the last thing I wanted was work fucking following me on holiday.”

“Right, of course not,” said the sergeant. “You arrived yesterday?”

“Drove up in the morning, had lunch in Causton – I’ve got the receipt somewhere for the pub if you like – picked up the keys to this place, went out for groceries, sat on the lawn and read a book, went to bed,” Alex said. “Then I got up this morning, made coffee, and then there’s this.”

“So you didn’t speak to anybody after you went shopping?” said DS Troy. “It’d help if you did.”

“The father of the owner of the cottage – well, the owner, I think,” Alex told him. “Didn’t get a name, but it’ll be the same as the son’s, which was, what was it, Delaney-Ross. So no, I can’t give you an alibi past five o’clock.”

He would have thought that’d at least get him an acknowledgement of the sodding mess his holiday had turned into, one officer to another, but instead Troy tensed. “Five o’clock? You’re sure that’s when you spoke?”

“Maybe a few minutes either way.” A horrible thought occurred. “That’s not, out there…”

 “Mr. Delaney-Ross senior?” said DS Troy. “Yeah, it is. Which currently makes you the last person to see him alive.”

“Oh, bloody fucking hell,” said Alex.

*

That revelation got him upgraded to a chat with the SIO, a DCI called Tom Barnaby, a bluff-faced bloke in his fifties. Alex had never met him but it turned out they had mutual acquaintances in other forces, which smoothed the road a little.

“You’re sure you never left the cottage, all evening,” said Barnaby.

“Absolutely,” said Alex. “You can check my cellphone GPS, or whatever; I’ve nothing to hide there. And it rained overnight – it’ll still be dry under my car.”

“Yes, thank you,” said Barnaby, and Alex mentally slapped himself; he was going to make them think he thought they didn’t know their jobs. Obviously they weren’t _his_ team, but they were still professionals. And, technically being a suspect, best to not upset them too much; they could make his life five kinds of hell before he got cleared, just for the fun of it. Alex could think of three ways he’d do it without trying. If he got some country copper up to the big city in the middle of an investigation, he might, too, depending on how the bloke handled himself.

“I take it the murder happened elsewhere?” he couldn’t help asking, all the same.

“It’s a possibility we’re pursuing,” Barnaby said. “I know you know there’s no sign of a struggle outside – or inside – the cottage you're staying in. We found his cellphone some distance away, outside the main house.”

“Who’d he call last?” Alex asked, professionally curious despite himself. “Might put me in the clear, you understand.”

“It might, but you’re out of luck there,” said Barnaby. “We can’t get anything off it – it’s dead. Seems to have got sand inside it, of all the things. We sent it off to the lab but the upshot is if he used it last night, we’ll have to wait until we request the records to find out. As Sergeant Troy told you, currently you’re the last person to see him alive. He had a woman who came around during the day but she’d been and gone by the time he spoke with you.”

Alex wasn’t really listening to the last part; he’d felt his stomach drop. “Did you say _sand in the inside_?”

“Do you know something about it?” Barnaby looked hopeful. “It was a bit odd.”

Alex thought very hard before he answered. His holiday was already ruined, but this would put it beyond all repair. On the other hand. What with the unicorns, and the women with carnivorous minges, and the cat-people, and the underground civilization, and the exploding council flats, and the sodding river goddesses, it seemed uncharitable to not give the locals the opportunity to call in back-up if it was needed. If it escalated they’d be called in anyway, and then like as not Nightingale would figure out he’d held his tongue and look down his nose at him for it. Probably even Grant would. He couldn’t be having that.  

He still chose his words very, very carefully. Barnaby was a DCI, so he’d likely know about the Folly; but he wouldn’t know much, and Alex didn’t want it to sound like he knew as much as he did – it wasn’t voluntary, God knew. “There was an advisory, about six months back. Anything like that – you should be bringing it to the SAU.”

“SAU?” Barnaby frowned.

Alex sighed. “The Special Assessment Unit, what used to be EC-9. The people who deal with the…weird stuff.”

“I really don’t see a need for specialists from the Met just yet,” Barnaby said stiffly. “We do deal with the _occasional_ murder here, you know.”

“I’m not telling you to call it in ‘cause I like them,” said Alex. “They’re a royal pain in my backside. On the other hand, if this _is_ their sort of case, you’ll want the back-up. So do it now rather than later.”

“Do you think you could elaborate on…” Barnaby made a gesture. “’Weird stuff’?”

Alex fixed his eyes on the mid-distance and said, very quickly, “The…supernatural.”

He looked back at Barnaby, who did not look convinced.

“Look,” he said, unable to believe he was arguing _for_ this. “Whether or not you believe in it, it might end up going on their budget allocation, you can’t complain about that.”

Barnaby brightened. “That would certainly be helpful.”

Alex wanted to just go back to bed, but he couldn’t, because forensics were still on his front lawn, so he took himself down the pub. It was the best alternative.

*

On the way, though, he made a quick phone call. Not to Miriam, who would laugh herself sick, but DC Sahra Guleed.

“Sir?” Sahra answered the phone. “The boss said you were on holiday – is there a problem?”

“The locals here are about to call in your friends in Russell Square,” Alex said. Sahra didn’t protest that description, even though he’d had to practically bribe her to take on the liaison job. He suspected she was just resigned to it by now. “I don’t fancy dealing with Grant on my alleged holiday. Come along.”

“Sir,” said Sahra, in what was not quite a whine. “Is that actually necessary?”

“It’s necessary because I’m telling you to do it,” said Alex, and then relented. “Sorry, Sahra – there’s a corpse on the fucking front lawn of my holiday cottage and it looks like weird bollocks is involved. I want it sorted as quickly as possible and I don’t want Grant haring off on some side-trail instead of solving the bloody murder. You hear me?”

“I hear you,” she sighed. “Alright. I’ll call Peter. Sorry about your holiday.”

“Unless you drove up here last night to murder a retiree just for the hell of it I don’t care what you think about my holiday,” said Alex. “See you in a few hours.”

*

The locals didn’t come back to talk to Alex for the rest of the day, hopefully because they were pursuing other lines of inquiry, like the actual murderer. He had lunch at the pub, watched some football on the grainy TV. The pub was called _The Black Dog_ and the waitress tried to tell him some local story about a ghostly dog, the usual sort of thing, Alex had heard it up in Manchester as a lad and it was in one of those Sherlock Holmes stories, wasn’t it. Evidently she’d pegged him for a tourist and thought he’d want some local colour; she was irritatingly cheerful, but eventually she got the message and just took his order. He didn’t escape hearing that here they called them _gurt dogs_ and this one was supposed to haunt an old fairy circle. Alex had no idea why people got so excited about this stuff. The reality of it was bad enough without making stuff up. At least, he devoutly hoped it was made up. Grant would know, but you couldn’t pay Alex to ask him about it.

After lunch he went back to the cottage and found they were still mucking around in the forensics tent but they were done with the cottage itself, there not being anything to find, so he grabbed his earbuds and a book, and went back to sit in the village green and listen to a bit of radio while he pretended to read. He dozed off for a while; wouldn’t have liked to do it in a London park, but it seemed safe enough here.

Around four o’clock, his phone buzzed and he saw it was Grant. He didn’t _want_ to answer it, but seeing as he’d told Barnaby to bring them out here, he supposed he had to.

“I’m on holiday,” he answered. “You need to go and bother DCI Barnaby and his sergeant.”

“Sahra just wanted me to let you know we were almost here, sir,” said Grant. “We’re going directly to the mortuary. But I have to ask, sir – what made you get us involved? How did you know who he was?”

Alex scowled at a passing duck, which probably deserved it; ducks were mean bastards. “What do you mean, how did I know? I don’t even know the bloke’s name, at least not his first name. Barnaby told me his phone had been found not working, with sand in the innards – that means one of your lot was mucking around it, doesn’t it? I read the memo. Don’t be surprised.”

“Oh,” Grant said, sounding surprised. “Oh, they didn’t mention that. Yeah. Yeah, that’s probably us. But it’s that…look, never mind. We’ll try and wrap this up as soon as possible. Enjoy your holiday, sir.”

“Tell me what it is,” Alex said in his best ominous Chief Inspector voice. He didn’t want to get involved, but he didn’t want Grant hiding anything from him, either.

“The victim,” Grant said after a second, obviously making the calculation about what was going to annoy Alex more, brushing him off or telling him the truth. “He is, he was, a retired w- he used to work for, well. Us. He br- he gave it up just after the Second World War. There’s not a lot of people left like him, so we keep an eye on them. We thought that was why you wanted us to get involved, sir.”

“I don’t know about retired whatevers or any of that,” Alex informed him. “I just knew about the phone.” That was a disturbing twist. “You think that matters?”

“Won’t know ‘till we get there,” Grant said. “Just coming off the A37 now.”

“One more thing,” Alex said. “Let them think Sahra’s with your lot.” He heard a groan; must be on speakerphone. “I know, she’s not going to like it, but the locals’ll like it better than someone from a Met Murder Team poking around their case. Her reputation’ll survive it.”

“I would hate to be responsible for ruining DS Guleed’s reputation, sir,” said Grant solemnly, because he never could help being a cheeky bugger if he had the whisper of a chance. There was a _whap_ noise, like somebody had hit him in the arm. “I can do that.”

*

Sahra texted him around eight o’clock that evening, _want an update_? _Grant wants to see your lawn._

_Fine,_ Alex texted back. _You can fill me in while he does his thing._ He wanted to say _mumbo-jumbo,_ but even if he was on holiday, there was the outside chance someone would call for any related police records and then that would have be explained. You had to be careful about what you committed to the written word, even the electronic kind.

It was still light out this time of year, so every divot and scuff left by the forensics team was visible; at least they and the corpse were gone. Alex pitied whoever was going to be responsible for tidying this place up once he was gone. The sensible thing to do would probably be to pack up and find somewhere else, but he doubted Delaney-Ross junior wanted to hear from him right now, with his father less than twelve hours dead – well, not more than twenty-eight but he wouldn’t have heard about it until this morning unless he _had_ done it – and Alex didn’t like the thought of fleeing. Besides which, the locals wouldn’t want him to go far in case he had more questions. He didn’t fancy his odds of finding decent accommodation nearby at this time of year.

He didn’t have anything to offer Sahra but a glass of water, not being much for fizzy drinks or juice, but she took that anyway. He didn’t offer one, or anything else, to Grant, who in any case was doing something out on the lawn Alex probably didn’t want to know about. Looking for his magic glow, or vibrations, or whatever.

“How’s it going?” he asked Sahra; they were both in the cottage’s kitchen, taking up the two chairs at the small table. Alex wasn’t too sure about the structural integrity of his. It was furniture designed for midgets, or at least those well under six foot. Sahra seemed to be managing, but she was skinny as a rake despite being tall for a girl.

“Well, the trouble is, sir,” she said, “Technically you’re still a suspect.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said Alex. “All right, then: I suppose you can’t tell me anything.”

“Just thought I’d get that out of the way. Anyway, here's now it looks. We’ve got a dead ninety-year-old male. Son, wife, and grandkids live in the next village over; they’re all doing a good job of shock and grief, glad I’m not FLO for this. As far as we know everybody liked him, he’d lived here for sixty years, the closest we’ve got to a motive is some complaint about trees he wasn’t trimming.”

“And the…” Alex made a gesture that was meant to say _weird bollocks_. Sahra got it; she was smart enough.

“Definitely something going on,” she said. “According to Peter, and he knows what he’s doing. But he says it might have just been self-defense – apparently the victim was a, um…”

“I get it,” said Alex.

“Practitioner,” said Sahra. “Is what Peter and his guv like to call it. Or he was, back around the Second World War.”

“What killed him?”

“Jury’s still out. His throat’s badly torn, almost like it was a dog or something, but the defensive wounds aren’t there. Apparently there’s a bunch of local legends about a black -”

“I do not want to know about magical fucking ghost dogs, or feral black panthers, or any other sort of fucking wildlife.”

“The only verifiable exciting wildlife around here is wallabies,” she said, “and it definitely wasn’t them. No, working theory is someone wanted to make it _look_ like he’d had his throat torn out, but pathology’s still figuring out what the weapon was.”

“Wallabies?” Alex asked despite himself.

“Zoo escapees,” she said. “Peter can tell you all about it if you ask. Don’t ask.”  

“Not bloody likely. Dead before he ended up in that river, then.”

“Around ten p.m.,” she agreed, “which means no alibi for you – but no motive either, unless he was that rude to you.”

“No, nothing like that,” said Alex, and ignored the pang of guilt for all but telling the man to sod off. He wouldn’t be feeling it if the bloke hadn’t got himself offed the same day. “All right. I doubt I’m very high up their list, but they’re not going to like having me around even if they can’t tell me to leave, so best you keep quiet you’re with our lot, as much as you can.”

Sahra made a face. “Okay. I suppose it doesn’t matter what a bunch of coppers in the middle of nowhere think I do.”

There was a knock on the back door; Grant, it must be. Sahra let him in.

“Well, nothing here,” he said. “I need to talk to the – there’s some local inquiries I can pursue, contacts of people in London, that sort of thing. Might give us a better time on when he ended up in the river, might not.”

“Bev’s country cousins?” asked Sahra.

“Not this far out,” said Grant. “But friends of friends, sort of thing. I’ll give her a ring, see if she can call around and arrange an introduction. It’ll make things go more smoothly.”

“Who’s Bev?” asked Alex, against all his better instincts.

“His girlfriend,” said Sahra.

“A key part of our community engagement strategy,” said Grant in tones that almost sounded like he wasn’t taking the piss, but with a smirk that said he was. He straightened his face right quick when Alex gave him a look. “Seriously, sir.”

“Sahra says I didn’t get you out here for nothing,” Alex said instead of letting Grant wind him up.

“Yes and no, sir,” said Grant. “I think the magic that killed our victim’s cellphone was used in self-defense and there might not be anything else to it, as far as our end of things goes. Obviously he wasn’t successful. But…he was one of us, I suppose he still was, in a way. My guv will want me to help solve this.” He said the last a bit defensively, like he was expecting an argument. Alex considered giving it to him and then considered what it would look like if he told the locals they needed Grant and then sent him packing the same day.

“Jesus Christ,” he said instead. “Fine. Now get out of here – have you got somewhere to stay, the pair of you?”

“Locals set us up with a B&B,” said Sahra. “Watch as they try to feed me bacon and sausages for breakfast.”

“We’ll find something,” said Grant. “You’re driving, I can’t let you starve.”

“You’d better not,” she said. Alex was glad those two had found their way to a working partnership; having that sort of low-level connection between the Folly and his team vastly reduced the amount of time he had to spend talking to Grant’s boss, which was nothing but a blessing. It would have been even better if it had worked out with Lesley May, but that was water under the bridge now, and he tried not to think on what had happened there too often. It just made him want to punch something, or somebody. All that bloody potential.

“Alright, now out,” he said, and they did as they were told. Just in time too, it turned out; not five minutes later DS Troy turned up again. He wasn’t an idiot, and immediately looked askance at the extra glass Alex had on the bench, the one Sahra had used.

“DS Guleed and PC Grant just dropped by,” he said. “Wanted to double-check with me about why I told your boss to call them in. I hope they’re not making too much of a nuisance of themselves.”

Troy looked practically disappointed. Alex really hoped he wasn’t getting too excited about Alex as a suspect. “Not yet. I wanted to ask you again about what Mr Delaney-Ross said to you when you talked yesterday evening.”

They went through it again – Alex didn’t have anything more to add, although Troy was clearly pushing for anything that might resemble a motive – and then Troy took himself off, too. Alex thought about another beer, but decided to make it an early night. It was too early in the case to be drinking away his problems. Give it another day or two.

It wasn’t like he could just take off back to London, anyway, not while he was clearly still a suspect. Miriam was going to be laughing for _weeks_.

*

The next day, after fortifying himself with a proper breakfast – most of the time when he was working it was toast, which was fine but nothing like a full English for setting you up for the day – Alex made up for it by walking into the village. Despite the murder inquiry it was still as sleepy as it had been the day before. It wasn’t as hot as it had been in the spring, which had been unseasonable, but still decently warm if overcast.

There was something going on around the church by the village square, a blocky stone thing that was probably older than the Met by a decent amount, and in the hall next to it. Setting up for a fair or something, by Alex’s reckoning; lots of bunting and flowers and that sort of thing. Probably if he looked the village up online there’d be some sort of website or Facebook announcement telling him what it was. Everything seemed to have a website these days. Made constables’ jobs so much easier, or at least involve so much less walking than it had when he was their age. Made them lazy about some things, too; the Internet was bloody useful but it wasn’t a substitute for getting someone in an interview room. Nothing was.  

He spotted a thin, beaky-nosed woman grappling with getting folding tables out of the back of a van. The tables were longer than she was tall, and there wasn’t anybody else in sight, so Alex heaved a sigh and went to give her a hand.

“Oh, no, I can manage it,” she said in a high, uncertain voice. “Really, it’s fine.” She had gingery-brown hair that had probably been red when she was younger, though she couldn’t be more than her late thirties, and deep circles under her eyes. She might have been crying recently, by the looks of it, as well.

“It’s no trouble,” Alex said, even though he didn’t really want to, but he’d started now hadn’t he, and she wavered a bit and then let him carry them into the hall for her. She jumped when he let them down a little too quickly, and jumped again when he asked her where she wanted them. He wondered if it was the murder, or if she was in charge of the fair or whatever it was, or whether she was just one of those nervous people by nature.

“Oh, Emma,” said another woman, coming over; she was a bit older, blonde, looked Iike the type who was into everything. “You didn’t say you were bringing the tables in – I see you’ve got some help.”

“Yes, it’s, er, um, I don’t actually know, he took them off me,” said Emma.

“I’m Joyce, and this is Emma,” said the other woman, smiling at Alex. “You’re not local, are you? Emma would know you if you were. Here for the summer?”

“Just a week or so,” said Alex. “I’m Alex.” They hadn’t offered surnames, so no need to give his.

“Ohhhhh, of course!” said Joyce. “You’re the policeman up from London, the one who found poor – what was it? – anyway, the poor man who, well, you know.”

Emma made a queer sort of choking noise and muttered something about seeing to the van, and scuttled off.

“Was she a friend of his?” Alex had to ask. Professional instincts.

“Oh, I’m not really sure,” said Joyce. “I don’t live here, I just volunteered to help with the fete because I know Emma through my acting group. And then Tom turns up and he’s got a body, like he always seems to do at these things. Honestly, I don’t know why I bother. Probably safer for everybody if I just stayed in Causton.”

“Tom?”

“Barnaby,” she said. “My husband. It’s not that I’m not very sorry about someone dying, but you sort of learn to ignore it after a while. Hopefully they’ll solve it quickly and you can have your holiday.”

She smiled at him. Alex had no idea what to say, so he settled for a wordless noise of agreement while he tried to think.

“Ah, Mrs Barnaby,” said someone from behind Alex; he turned to see what was obviously the vicar, an older bloke in the collar and everything. “How are the preparations going?”

“We’re getting on with it,” said Joyce Barnaby. “Emma’s just brought the tables over.”

“Yes, excellent,” said the vicar. He seemed vague but there was something about the way he looked that Alex that said he wasn’t; Alex hadn’t been raised to be rude to the clergy, but this one was making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Or maybe that was just the way they were getting on with the fair with somebody dead. Police having that attitude was one thing, but a village like this, there shouldn’t have been a murder in the last fifty years, on average. The vicar was going on, though. “I hope there hasn’t been any more trouble with _those people_?”

“Er, no,” said Emma, “although I have to say I really don’t see how it would hurt to let them -”

“They can peddle their pagan ideas everywhere else they please,” said the vicar sternly, “but not at our church fete. Things might be different in the city -” He glanced meaningfully at Joyce Barnaby.

“Causton’s hardly the _city,”_ she said. “Unless you meant London.”

“Surprised you’re going on with it – won’t there have to be a funeral?” Alex changed the subject. “Must be the first murder here for a while. Not being the city, and all.”  

“Well, no, I mean there was that lad who got stabbed with the pitchfork in Midsomer Mallow and that movie man who got blown up in Upper Warden, but nobody here,” said the vicar. “I suppose we’ve been lucky, really.”

“Not like Badger’s Drift,” said Joyce Barnaby, shaking her head.

“Although one does wonder, with what happened last week,” the vicar went on, “what things are coming to.”

“What happened last week?” asked Emma, blinking like a startled rabbit.

“Well, perhaps it’s a sign of the times that you don’t remember,” said the vicar in a way that made Alex want to roll his eyes, “but the burglary, you know, at the vicarage? We didn’t have anything _personal_ taken, thank heavens, they didn’t make it upstairs, but one or two antiques that belonged to the house. Very sad.”

“Have you reported it?” Alex asked reflexively. Burglary was a bugger of a crime; it was opportunistic or targeted. You almost never got the first lot because they’d just snatched whatever they saw, unless they sold it stupidly or did enough in a small area that you collared them for the whole set. You almost never got the second lot because they were professionals and whatever it was wasn’t being sold openly, or was going a long way away. His money was on the second, for antiques. But all the little reports added up.

“Oh, well, yes, I’m doing that today,” the vicar said, sounding surprised. “It’s been very busy and there wasn’t really any _damage_ , and with poor John, I did think the police might have better -”

“You should always report these things, we usually get whoever it is when we see a pattern,” said Alex. “Never good odds with antiques, it was probably professionals, but it can’t hurt.”

“I take it you’re a policeman,” said the vicar, now eyeing him in a way Alex found frankly suspicious, but lots of people had that reaction to the police.

“On holiday,” said Alex, and made his escape. The last thing he needed was getting mixed up in yet another Midsomer crime.

He didn’t speak to Grant or Guleed again that day, making it almost feel like an actual holiday, but he did see DS Troy walking away from them very briskly outside the victim’s house. Grant was carrying a stack of books. Alex resolutely did not wonder why.

“Inspector Seawoll,” Troy greeted him politely. “Having a better day today?”

“So far,” said Alex meaningfully, not that it was any of Troy’s business. “Hope those two are being helpful.”

Troy made a face which did not bode well for the Met’s reputation with the Avon and Somerset Constabulary. Bugger it. Alex blamed Grant. It was always Grant, somehow. “They’re not getting in the way. But they’re asking – well, PC Grant is, he’s asking a lot of nonsense questions about local myths and so on, it’s like he thinks it’s still the nineteenth century out here or something.”

“It’s his job,” Alex said, and tried not to gnash his teeth at having to say it. “That’s all. I’ve had to put up with enough of it for other investigations.”

“Well, you can’t expect people like that to understand what it’s like here,” said Troy.

Hang on a second. “Like that? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing!” Troy exclaimed, defensively. “Just, well, they’ve probably never been out of London, have they, and DS Guleed doesn’t seem very...assimilated. I’m surprised her family let her do a job like that.”

“Now listen here a minute,” Alex told him. “They’re officers of the police, they’re here to give you and your boss a hand, and you don’t know a fucking thing about either of them or why they do what they do, so you’ll treat them with some fucking respect, you hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” said Troy, going a bit stiff. Well, it might have been less _telling_ and more _yelling_.

“Good,” Alex said, and left him standing there. Wouldn’t do for him to remember Alex was not only on holiday but technically a suspect.

*

He stopped in at the corner store for a paper, decided to get the _Mirror_ since he was on holiday. He felt a pang he hadn’t felt in years at the sight of the ciggie packets, which just went to show what a bloody nightmare this was turning into. If the cottage he was staying in hadn’t been strictly no-smoking he might have caved. Two doors down from his cottage, which was still a fair walk because this was the country, his eye was caught by a fantastic display of roses. He’d walked, and driven, the other way earlier today and the two days before, so he hadn’t noticed it. They hung in full bloom over a gazebo in the front garden, draped over the fence, clinging to the sides of the small house. Probably doing terrible things to the siding, thought Alex, but they were a lovely sight, every colour roses came in and one or two he wasn’t sure they did. Genetic engineering or something, probably. Although that seemed out of place for a village like this, but like as not half the houses belonged to the wealthy who’d retired out here to pretend it _was_ still the nineteenth century. This cottage was set in the curve of the river, backing right onto it; you could get a boat out from the back garden, probably.

There was a woman in the front garden, kneeling by one of the flowerbeds, with gardening gloves, a trowel, and dirt on her jeans that she brushed off as she stood. Alex made to keep going but she caught his eye, and it wouldn’t be polite, he supposed, to pretend he hadn’t been looking at her garden. She was a little older than him, it looked like, attractive in a sort of undefinable way that didn’t have anything to do with her features, short dark hair and deep brown eyes the colour of a leaf-stained river.

“They’re quite something in full bloom, aren’t they?” she said, gesturing around with her trowel.

“They’re very beautiful,” said Alex, who didn’t normally say things like that and wondered why he had.

“You’re the policeman from London,” she said. She had a nice voice, too, easy on the ear. Alex spent a lot of time listening to people talk, so he knew what he was talking about on that score.

He groaned. “Is there anybody who doesn’t know that?”

“It’s a small place, and we’ve had a murder,” she said.  “Of course it’s got around. But I don’t think you’ve got anything to do with it, have you?”

“No,” Alex said, “of course not, he seemed like an alright old bloke, what’d I have against him?” And wondered why he was saying that, too.

“Well, good,” she said. “I don’t like people coming in here and upsetting things.”

“I’m just trying to have a holiday,” said Alex.

“Maybe it _was_ our local myth after all,” she said with an impish smile. “The black dog, not just portending death but bringing it. He was a wizard, after all. Sometimes they come to no good end.”

“Wizard,” Alex scoffed. “You don’t believe in that things like that? They’re nonsense.” She seemed too intelligent for that. He couldn’t say why. He’d never quite figured out what was really going on with Nightingale and all of it, but it couldn’t be _magic_ magic, could it. No such thing. Grant liked his scientific explanations too much, too.

“The thing with the dog is, of course,” she said, not taking offence. Alex felt relieved and couldn’t say why. “But people like to have these stories, to differentiate themselves from the next village over. And I think you know it’s not _all_ nonsense. Didn’t you tell them to ask Nightingale’s starling to come here? I’ve seen him fluttering around the village, and he hasn’t even come and introduced himself. Rude, I call it.”

“What?” said Alex, the fog clearing a little from his brain; he couldn’t make head or tails of that sentence. “What – what’s your name?” Instinct; start with name and occupation. Always the first question.

“Somer,” she said.

“Like the river,” Alex said, angry now because something wasn’t right, something wasn’t –

“Exactly like the river,” she said. “But they call me Jenny, sometimes. Jenny Somer. Tell Constable Grant to come and see me.”

“I don’t tell him what to do.” True and not true at once. She smiled, and gestured for him to leave as she knelt back down to her roses, and Alex was opening the door of his cottage before he realised that was wrong.

Jesus Christ. Maybe he _should_ call it quits and head back to London. He could clear it with Barnaby, surely; he wasn’t hard to track down, and he didn’t have any more evidence to give. Whatever Jenny Somer was exactly, whatever she had to do with Grant, or Nightingale, he didn’t want to know.

*

When Sahra called him later that evening and said there’d been another murder, that all but decided it: he wasn’t sticking around. Not his case, not his problem, and not his holiday anymore.

“Jesus Christ,” Alex said. He poked at the chop he had frying, balancing the phone between his ear and shoulder. “ _Another_ one? Family member?”

“Nope,” said Sahra. “They’re all still fine. And all still looking perfectly innocent, if you’re wondering. No, it’s someone called Emma Bradshaw. Ran the local garden center, was in the middle of setting up for a church fete. DCI Barnaby’s wife was helping out and found her dead in the church hall. Stabbed. Bit of a mess – if they have any sense they’ll cancel the fete.”

Alex stopped dead, spatula mid-air. No, it couldn’t be.

“Sir?” Sahra prodded through the phone.

“I…think I met her this morning,” he said, when he’d thought it through. “In her thirties? A bit ginger? Sort of nervous-looking?”

“Don’t know about the last bit. Hard to tell with all the blood and such. But yeah, thirty-five, reddish hair. No offense, sir, but you’re making yourself look a bit suspicious, you know that?”

“Don’t be fucking ridiculous, of course I know that,” Alex snapped. “Is it connected? Is there a husband, boyfriend?” Ninety-five percent of the time that was what it was.

“Recent break-up,” said Sahra, in tones of mingled satisfaction – that was usually a quick solve – and regret. “In the middle of a divorce. But he lives in London, they’re having him travel back now. He might be in the clear, and then it really gets messy. They’re going to want to know where you were.”

“Surprised they’re not knocking on my door as we speak,” said Alex. “They’d better hold off; I want my dinner.”

“Please don’t talk to me about dinner,” said Sahra.

“Oh, right,” Alex said. “It’s no food for you right now, isn’t it?”

“No, not when I’m travelling and it’s sixteen hours of daylight as well, it’s just that I was right about all the sausages and bacon and it’s getting on my nerves.”

“I won’t, then. Put Grant on.”

There were muffled noises as she handed the phone over; Alex took the opportunity to turn the element off and pull the veggies out of the oven.

“Sir?” came Grant’s voice.

“This new murder,” said Alex. “Anything to do with your lot?”

“I don’t think so,” Grant said. “Or at least it wasn’t _done_ with – it was a shotgun. Nothing magical about that.”

“And the body doesn’t have the special magical glow, or whatever?”

Alex had always half-suspected Grant was making it up, about the glow, or the vibrations, or whatever it was, but he’d never caught him out on it and didn’t much want to anyway.

“No, sir,” Grant said. “Nothing at all. Doesn’t mean it’s not related, of course, but there wasn’t any ma- er- anything of particular interest to us about the murder itself. Could be the motive, though, like with James Gallagher. Or the weapon. It wasn’t left with the body. I’ll have to find it to see.”

“And…” Alex encouraged him, because the fact that there _was_ something else couldn’t be clearer if Grant had shouted it.

“The locals think it’s connected,” Grant said. “According to DS Troy, and I quote, ‘we’re never lucky enough to get just one body’.”

Alex got down a plate and flipped the chop onto it. “Bloody hell. What sort of place is this?”

“I’m not sure,” Grant said darkly. “What I do know is that despite what the local hippie group keeps going on about, it definitely wasn’t any sort of mythological canine, and if this other case really is connected…I’ve got to find the murder weapon.”

“Finally, some good news. Magical fucking hounds of the Baskervilles or whatever running around the place would have been the last straw.”

“I couldn't agree more, sir,” said Grant, with apparent sincerity.

“So go and find the murder weapon, then, and let me get back to my holiday.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Also,” said Alex. “I spoke to a local woman this afternoon. Very impressive rose garden, name of Jenny Somer. She says you should have been by to say hello to her. I didn’t ask why and I don’t want you to tell me, but you’re not making the Met look bad by ignoring it.”

“Shit,” said Grant. “Yeah, I meant to do that this evening, and then we got another corpse. Bev told me – anyway, never mind, thanks, sir, I’ll take care of it first thing.”

“See that you do, I don’t want to hear anything more about it,” Alex growled, but at least partially for effect.

*

He wasn’t treated to another visit from the locals until after breakfast the next morning, which was positively civilized. It was Tom Barnaby again, which Alex also chose to take as a mark of respect.

“I’m afraid we need to have another chat,” Barnaby said. “I suppose you’ve heard?”

“I have,” said Alex, and didn’t say who from, even though Barnaby probably knew. “An Emma Bradshaw, wasn’t it? I spoke to her yesterday, for a few minutes. And your wife, by the way. Hard on her.”

“It is,” said Barnaby, “although Joyce is surprisingly resilient to these things. I don’t think they knew each other very well. Now, please don’t take this the wrong way – Miss Bradshaw was in charge of the fete, so she spoke to a great many people yesterday. You’re not under any particular suspicion. But if you could perhaps explain to me where you went after the church…”

Alex summarized it for him, including having spoken to Ms Somer, or whatever she called herself, but didn’t mention that his memory of going between her cottage and his holiday house was a bit hazy; he was certain that was distracted thinking, nothing more.

“That certainly puts you out of the picture,” said Barnaby. “She was killed around three p.m., when you were speaking to Jenny Somer. You were still one of the last people to speak to her, though, so if you could give your impressions…”

“She was nervy,” Alex said. “Something on her mind. She’d been crying. The vicar mentioned something about a burglary at the vicarage and that upset her, too. And he was on at her about not letting somebody have a table at the fete, one of those New Age groups or something, sounded like.”

“Yes, we know about that,” Barnaby said. “A bit of a bugbear with him, I believe.”

Alex was frankly surprised it wasn’t Muslims – worrying about pagans seemed a bit sixties – but then, looking around it seemed like Sahra might be the only one within thirty miles. Even the corner store owners were white. “Why do you think these cases are connected?”

“What makes you think we do think that?” Barnaby tried in response, but Alex just looked at him; they were both DCIs and they knew the score. “Yes, very well. She seems to have got very upset shortly after the first murder, and now we’re reconstructing _her_ timeline, there’s no alibi. On the third hand, there’s no evidence she had anything against Mr Delaney-Ross, but we’re taking into account all the possibilities.”

“You don’t think she did it?”

“Unlikely, but she may have been killed to stop her saying something. That does happen more often than you’d think.”

Barely ever, in Alex’s experience – even murderers were usually smart enough to know that adding to the body count didn’t make them safer – but Miriam’s warning was haunting him, this morning. Something in the water, indeed.

“Well,” he said. “Glad to know I’m off the hook for this one, at least.”

“If you could do me just one favour,” said Barnaby, “and maybe don’t speak to anybody else. It seems to be rather fatal for them.”

Alex scowled at him as he left. He’d spoken to half a dozen or more people in this village; almost all of them were still alive. It wasn’t anything to do with _him._

*

He held out until the early afternoon without ringing Sahra or Grant for an update, doing some more of that sitting out on the lawn with a book he’d told Miriam he was going to do – and dozing on the lawn, that was nice – but then Sahra called him.

“Thought you’d want to know,” she said. “We’ve got the weapon.”

“Which one?”

“First one,” she said. “Technically we’re not supposed to be looking into the second case, there’s no evidence of anything….funny…about it.”

“What and where was it?”

“A knife, nasty serrated dagger thing,” said Sahra. “Looks, according to Peter, like genuine early twentieth century tourist tat from India or somewhere round there, although I bet the original owner had a much more impressive story ready to trot out. It was buried in Emma Bradshaw’s garden. And – here’s the best bit – it’s one of the things the vicar reported stolen yesterday afternoon, in a burglary he somehow failed to mention that allegedly happened a couple of days ago.”

“Well, that’s not good for _him_. How did you know it was there?”

“I didn’t,” she said. “Peter did. I just helped with the digging.”

“Your mystical glow again?” Alex said to Grant later. “Shining through the dirt?”

“Ye-es?” Grant said. “Sure. Mystical glow.” He paused. “Actually, I spotted where she’d cut the turf away. Nightingale told me once – you know what, it’s not really relevant.”

“Very good,” said Alex, who’d been opening his mouth to cut Grant off. “I suppose that makes this one case, not two.”

“It does,” said Grant. “They’ve got the ex-husband in now – Sahra’s interviewing him while I…do some stuff. Specialist stuff. With the –”

“I don’t want to know,” said Alex automatically.

“Yes, sir,” said Grant.

*

Grant told him the husband’s name – Andrew Marsh – so Alex, purely out of holiday boredom, obviously, had a look for him online; the cottage didn’t have internet, a deliberate decision on his part, but he did have his phone with him and the reception wasn’t bad. It was actually ridiculous what people put out there about themselves, these days.

He looked surprisingly similar to Bradshaw in the way married couples sometimes did, same hair, same nose. Nothing else about him of note, at least not that Google was going to cough up in a cursory search. The only reason Alex knew it was even the right one was that there were some Facebook picture of the pair of them, presumably before the break-up. The caption on one mentioned a pregnancy; nobody had said anything about Bradshaw having kids. That might be the reason for the break-up. People had funny reactions to grief.

“You’re not going to _believe_ what we got out of the husband,” was the first thing Sahra said to him, or nearly the first, that evening.

“Try me,” said Alex, who had been a police officer for over thirty years and was rarely surprised by what idiots people were when they thought nobody was going to find out about it.

“They were getting divorced because they found out they were siblings.”

All right, that one was new. “Sort of thing that tends to come up _before_ the marriage, isn’t it?”

“Well, you’d _think_ ,” said Sahra. “His family moved away when he was young, everybody forgot the village scandal back then was whether his mum was having it off with her dad, he comes back, they get married, start trying for kids, have a couple of miscarriages, get genetic tests done or whatever because that’s what you do these days and oh dear: they’re half-siblings. Cue crying, general upset, and a divorce.”

“You hear these things about the country, but for God’s sake,” Alex said. “How is this relevant?”

“He thinks she might have been being blackmailed about it.”

Alex turned the pieces around in his head. “By the first victim? No, that doesn’t make sense – unless it’s one of the family that killed her, revenge or that sort of thing.”

“Blackmailed into being an accessory to murder, maybe,” said Sahra. “Not that she was even a suspect, but her alibi for it is dodgy. So we’re looking for her other contacts.”

“What’s Grant doing?”

“He had to go and talk to Ms Somer,” said Sahra. “The message from yesterday? He called it _community outreach_.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” said Alex. “She was organizing a fete, she must know half the village. You’ll have your work cut out for you.”

“That’s the problem,” Sahra replied glumly. “And there’s a nice little stand-off with her and the local pagan group, apparently, or rather the local pagan group and the vicar _through_ her – they wanted a stall at the fete. DS Troy’s interviewing people now. At least he’s good for something.”

“Has he been giving you trouble?” Alex had to ask.

“Nothing, sir, it’s fine.” It wasn’t and Sahra was lying, but Alex was on holiday and barely not a suspect and he didn’t have standing to go to Troy’s boss, not when Sahra wasn’t saying anything. Grant wouldn’t either, not if it was about him too. Alex resolved to be ruder to Troy if he had to deal with him again, it being the only thing he was likely to be able to do about it.

“All right,” Alex said. “Keep me posted.”

“Yes, sir,” said Sahra. “Any exciting plans for today?”

“Going for a walk,” said Alex. “Getting out of the village. According to DCI Barnaby, that might be safer for everybody else, seeing I was the last or nearly last person to speak to both victims.”

Sahra laughed. That was better. “Enjoy your walk, sir.”

*

The route he’d worked out from the local council website’s section on walks went down the Somer and then back around up a hill and through a small old patch of forest, with some Roman ruins. Alex didn’t care much for archaeology and that sort of thing but they could be scenic, assuming it wasn’t just two stones and some lines in the ground you needed radar or something to find.

The first person he saw was Jenny Somer, tutting at some beer bottles. Environmental type, apparently. Her expression didn’t bode well for somebody, although Alex wasn’t sure why he thought that – she was just a middle-aged woman who grew nice roses. He tried not to think about Grant and his _community outreach_. She just nodded to him, which suited him fine.

After that there were a few other walkers, some serious hikers doing the longer section of this trail, and a few sheep. Also something that might have been a wallaby, but it was out of the corner of Alex’s eye. Not good evidence, and probably just a thought put into his head by Sahra, the other day. No big black dogs, but it was a bit sunny for that sort of thing.

The path wound up, away from the river onto the hilltop. Alex stopped there to look out over the countryside. It was beautiful, rolling and lush with summer, church spires and low buildings visible here and there, the smear of Causton in the far distance. If only he didn’t know the murder statistics.

It was quiet, too, no traffic, just the low buzz of birds and insects and the wind in the trees. And the faint, far off-sound of – digging, Alex thought, the thud of spade on soil and the shimmer of spadefuls as they were thrown onto the ground. Or, no, it couldn’t be that far away, could it? Just down the hill a bit, in those trees, near where the Roman ruins were supposed to be. As he got closer he came upon a couple of signs informing him archaeological work was going on, although the dates listed didn’t include the present week. He could still hear the digging, a little off the track.

He told himself it wasn’t any of his business, but then again somebody might be mucking with the archaeological site, which was an offense – Alex couldn’t recall the law offhand but he’d read a memo on an update to it at some point in the last year. Arresting somebody would be a pure pleasure, at this stage of his ruined holiday, paperwork be damned.

He didn’t expect to find the vicar working the spade. And he _certainly_ hadn’t expected the suspiciously human-shaped lump wrapped in a tarpaulin next to the hole he was digging, or surprisingly athletic way the man dropped his shovel and grabbed the shotgun lying on top of the – well, likely the corpse – and pointed it at Alex.

Alex got his hands into view, because this wasn’t his first go-around, although there was less back-up than he liked, and also it’d been about twenty years since somebody had _actually_ pointed a gun at him and he hadn’t missed it. “All right, all right, no need for that.”

There was a slow trickle of blood edging out of the tarpaulin. This case was piling up bodies like fucking firewood. Alex hoped it wasn’t anybody else he’d met – or worse, a copper.

“I can’t stop now,” said the vicar, sounding frantic. “If he’d just trimmed the bloody trees!”

“Wait,” said Alex. “What the _fuck_?”

He was subjected to a lengthy and rambling rant on the topic of the vicar’s motivation, which would have been tedious if useful in an interview room and was just tedious in the woods with a shotgun pointed squarely at him. He tried edging to where he could get behind a tree – if the bloke got a round off he’d have to reload and Alex wagered he’d be faster than that – but the man stopped confessing to snap “ _Stay where you are!”_ so Alex did. After all. Shotgun.

Apparently there’d been some sort of longstanding feud with Delaney-Ross senior over mulberry trees planted along the border between his property and the vicarage, and also something about him _consorting with evil forces_ , which Alex had to work very hard not to roll his eyes at because for fuck’s sake. So he’d got Emma Bradshaw to do away with the poor bugger, trying to pin it on the local hippies – “They all believe in these unholy things!”, Christ, no wonder the bloke had been exiled to this sort of village. Then she’d got cold feet and planned on confessing, so naturally she’d had to go.

“And now there’s you!” said the vicar, by now practically frothing at the mouth, but unfortunately not lowering the gun. “And I really do hate to offer violence to an officer of the law, but you must understand -”

“There’s still time,” Alex said, trying to sound sincere. “How many bodies are you going to bury? You can’t just keep –

“Excuse me,” said a polite voice from behind Alex, and fuck him, it was Grant. “Look, I hate to interrupt, but could we continue this conversation without the loaded firearm?”

“Don’t think I won’t shoot you too!” screeched the vicar.

“You’re welcome to try,” said Grant, stepping up beside and slightly in front of Alex, like he could protect him, which was ridiculous because Alex had the better part of a head on him. He didn’t look bothered at all, which Alex wanted to put down to good training at Hendon but was afraid was just knowing he had the ability to do whatever it was with magic.

“Grant, don’t –” Alex began, and this time he was interrupted by the shotgun going off. It was bloody near deafening.

Alex didn’t even have time to brace himself, but then he realised the man had missed, and _then_ he realised he hadn’t; the shot was lying in a spray at Alex’s feet and in the half-dug grave he’d been facing the vicar across, and Grant had a hand out in front of him like he was holding something up. He gestured, a delicate little flick, and the shotgun yanked itself out of the vicar’s hands and into the grave as well.

The vicar gaped at him. Grant grinned, and wiggled his fingers. “Evil forces.”

There was a sort of strangled noise from behind Alex, but he ignored it in favour of lunging around the grave and behind the vicar, getting a decent grip on the bloke’s arms, the kind of hold that worked even when you were smaller than the person you were arresting and definitely worked when you were Alex’s size and dealing with an average-sized man in his sixties. In fact, Alex had to be careful or he was going to hurt the bloke; he wouldn’t stop struggling, or mouthing off about sorcery.

Alex listened with half an ear because it would be evidence later, or need covering up later, but he was more concerned with grabbing Sahra’s handcuffs off her – she’d been behind him too, nice and quiet – and slapping them on, to save himself the effort. She gave the caution in routine tones, apparently not bothered by Grant’s fucking magical spells or whatever. Barnaby and Troy were there as well, Barnaby looking disapprovingly at the body, Troy looking at Grant like he’d seen a ghost. There better not be any fucking ghosts, Alex thought irritably.

“Evil forces?” Troy asked, nervously.

“Joke,” Grant said quickly. “He got nervous when he missed and dropped the gun.”

“Yes,” agreed Barnaby even more quickly. “Which was _very lucky_ for everybody concerned, _wasn’t it_ , Troy?”

“But…” Troy said.

“Extremely fucking lucky,” Alex agreed loudly, and proceeded to read Grant the riot act for getting in the way, which put an unfortunate smirk on Troy’s face but a pleasing look of chagrin on Grant’s, so it came out about even in the end.

Of course after that Alex had to give a statement, which ended up taking half the rest of the sodding day. Although at least he was given the respect due to his rank, which was a desk and coffee and some uninterrupted time to write the thing out himself. He half-overheard Sahra doing a truly impressive job of explaining away Grant’s ridiculous showing off – they were supposed to be fucking discreet about it! – to DS Troy, who was at least willing to be convinced he hadn't seen anything unusual.

The body in the tarp turned out to be the bloke running the local hippie group – or pagans, whatever they called themselves – who’d shown up to offer his condolences about Bradshaw, and also incidentally to ask the vicar to stop spreading the rumour they’d been responsible for Delaney-Ross, and run right up against a psychotic break or something like that. Too bad for him. Alex found it irritating on the principle that the local police should have had a better line on their suspect pool, but then he supposed the vicar hadn’t been very high up the list.

“Actually we’ve had a couple,” said Troy. “And a couple of them have been on the wrong end, too. Not a very safe profession around here.”

No wonder this one had ended up in Midsomer; his superiors had probably been trying to get rid of him.

This was definitely the worst holiday Alex had ever tried to take, and that counted the time as a kid his family had gone to Blackpool and it had rained for a week straight.

*

Things were not helped when Thomas bloody Nightingale turned up the next day – after everybody else had done the hard work, of course – with that bloody dog at his heels, to boot.

“Hey, boy!” said Sahra enthusiastically, as it jumped up at Grant and then her. She liked it, apparently. So did Miriam, who normally had better taste. Alex tried not to hold their owners against dogs, but Sahra had repeated something Grant had said about this one being able to smell magic, and ever since he’d never been able to like the thing. Magical fucking dogs. It was the last thing anybody needed.

“The funeral’s at ten,” Grant was telling Nightingale. “We’re done, more or less – it’s all with the locals now. Do you want me to come along?”

Alex wondered what the fuck was going on, and then remembered what Grant had told him at the start of this about the first victim. _He used to work for us._ That was the funeral Nightingale was there for.

“I don’t think there’ll be much to interest you,” Nightingale said.

“I can keep an eye on Toby if you’re both going,” said Sahra. “I’ve just got one more interview report to go over.”

“I don’t mind,” Grant told his governor.

“Then I suppose you might as well,” he was told, and Alex realised with some horror that Grant was going along to keep Nightingale company – to make him feel better. Jesus. There was getting on with your boss, and Grant was more or less Nightingale’s sergeant, the specifics of rank aside, but he’d thought Grant’s loyalty was half about being the sort of inquisitive bastard who liked the fucking supernatural and half being grateful for getting away from the CPU. But no, he _liked_ his boss. Jesus fucking Christ. There really was no accounting for taste.

It got worse when Michael Delaney-Ross showed up to go over his own statement, presumably the bits about the vicar’s row with his father over the mulberry trees – the motive for the whole thing, allegedly – and Nightingale introduced himself, and offered his condolences.

“That’s – very kind of you,” said Michael Delaney-Ross. “Your father knew him, you said? Or was it your grandfather?”

“My grandfather, yes,” said Nightingale, not even a pause or the flicker of an eyelid, the lying bastard. Grant’s expression didn’t change either; he didn’t know or he’d heard this sort of story before, Alex didn’t know which it was. “They were in the same regiment during the war – the Second World War.”

“I suppose there’s not many of them left,” said Delaney-Ross. “Time marches on. I didn’t know much about what he did during the war. He never wanted to talk about it.”

“I don’t think it was the sort of thing anybody wants to dwell on, if they don’t have to,” said Nightingale. Grant’s gaze flicked to him, just for a second, a sort of quiet sympathy in his face. Sahra, in passing, didn’t even notice; she definitely had no idea. Good for her. Alex wished he didn’t.

He found Tom Barnaby and checked that there was nothing else they needed from him.

“Oh, no, please, go and get at least some of your holiday,” Barnaby said.

“You don’t seem to find this sort of thing – unusual,” Alex said, cautiously.

“You mean, the, uh…” Barnaby waved a hand.

“Christ, no, let’s forget all about that! I mean all the bodies. Three in a week, that’s not nothing for somewhere this size.”

“Well, we do keep busier than you’d expect. Especially out in the villages,” Barnaby sighed. “This is why I’m never moving out of Causton. Joyce keeps saying how much nicer it would be in one of the villages, and I suppose the house is a little big now our daughter’s in London, but there’s always something like this.”

“What, and they never murder each other in Causton?” Alex asked.

“Well, yes,” said Barnaby, “but like you say, somewhere this size, it’s more noticeable. But you can’t tell me this is worse than working on a London homicide squad. You must get this sort of thing every day.”

Alex considered explaining that London’s murder rate wasn’t actually that high, and particularly not in Westminster, at least when revenge-fueled fucking eighteenth-century fucking ghosts weren’t fucking making people’s faces fall off, and that anyway it was different when the odds that it was going to be someone you knew personally were next to nothing. But then he looked at Barnaby and he didn’t.

“Well, you know,” he said. “London. Makes me sorry I left Manchester, sometimes.”

When he got back to the cottage, he didn’t even bother thinking twice about it, despite the glorious summer sunshine and the cool quiet noises of the Somer flowing past; he got out his suitcase and started packing. He might end up spending the last three days of his holiday on his own couch, but that had to be better than here. Nobody was going to get murdered on his couch. And if he didn’t tell anybody he’d left, they’d think he was still out here, so no chance of somebody getting cold feet on a case and bothering him.

The next time he went on holiday, Alex decided, he was just going to go back up north and visit his family. Or maybe the Lake District. He’d heard nice things about the Lake District. There wasn’t any weird bollocks up there – or this sort of ridiculous murder rate. They were _sensible_ up north.

He hoped. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you think I’m exaggerating about the murder rate in Midsomer (a county, not a village) I invite you to watch a few episodes and see for yourself. I wasn’t making up the thing Stephanopoulos mentions with the catapult either, although technically it _did_ happen several seasons after Troy left the show. 
> 
> Many thanks to anangryloaf for advice on British newspapers, astarreborn for advice on Ramadan observance, and ilikesallydonovan for reminding me that when in doubt in Midsomer, the vicar did it.


End file.
